Attributions and Challenges of Class in the Context of a Neoliberal Discourse on Education: Making Class in Swedish PBS Television About Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 87
  In Roundtable Session: Praxis, Pedagogy, and the Popular: Engaging Youth, Exploring Texts

Abstract

The paper addresses how class is articulated within the neoliberal educational discourse. It presents deconstructions of norms concerning education, class, and ethnicity in public discourse in television about Swedish public education. It is based on post-structural perspectives with a non-foundational perspective on class and education. The results reveal a conception of class based on place, race, housing, and income. Some places, races, housings, and incomes are expected to generate high status and high achievements in school, whereas others are expected to threaten the high status and the high achievements. The value that schools are assigned based on class disrupts the neoliberal assumption that all schools compete on a market where quality and achievement are independent of variables such as class.

Author

• Eva Reimers, Linköping University